Ep.165: Digging Deeper Into Grief as Disability Parents

Join hosts Carrie, Sara, and Amy as we take a deep dive into the grief we face as mothers of children with disabilities. In this episode, we talk about how grief can feel like fear or anger, the need to be honest with ourselves, and the transformative nature of lament. This topic is something you may not know that you need until you allow yourself the space. 

Eps. 165: May 7, 2024

Key Moments:
[4:23] Guilt says “I didn’t do enough.”
[7:29] My anger is actually grief 
[11:04} Why doesn’t God stop the pain
[17:58] “Everything is not going to be ok, but we’re gonna get through it”

Resources:
Extraordinary Kids: Nurturing & Championing Your Child With Special Needs
How To Build A Thriving Marriage
Dark Clouds Deep Mercy

If you enjoyed the show:

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• Find Amy at www.amyjbrown.com/  or on Instagram @amyjbrown_writer
• Find Carrie at www.carriemholt.com or on Instagram @carriemholt
• Find Sara at www.saraclime.com or on Instagram @saraclime

Transcript

Carrie M Holt: Hi there, today it's May 7th, and it's been one year since our book, The Other Side of Special, Navigating the Messy, Emotional,  Joy-Filled Life of the Special Needs Mom, was released into the world. We've received some really great feedback on how the book has helped moms process their messy emotions and how they love the reflection questions at the end of each chapter. We've also heard that moms enjoy how they can skip around to different chapters depending on what the day's current struggles are. They don't have to read the book from cover to cover. You don't have a copy of our new book, The Other Side of Special, or know someone who could use this amazing resource. You can find our book on Amazon and other online retailers like www.bakerbooks.com and www.christianBook.com. 

Hello there, it's Carrie and I'm here with Sara and Amy. You're listening to episode 165. This month we're gonna dig deeper into the topic of grief and lament. Later on this month, we're gonna have some special guests on our podcast, Kristin and Todd Evans, who actually have a new book coming out this month on marriage and disability parenting. The title of that book is: How to Build a Thriving Marriage as You Care for Children with Disabilities. You'll hear more about that later in the month.

First of all, I feel like grief is really hard to talk about. I think it's one of the things that we should be talking about as mothers of children with disabilities. But I think there's sometimes a lot of guilt around grief. I was actually having a conversation with a friend the other day. There are a lot of shoulds. I know we've said that on the podcast. We should not should all over ourselves. I don't even know how to say that.

Sara Clime: Carefully.

Carrie: Sometimes grief is a feeling that we don't even know that's actually what we're feeling as maybe we watch siblings grow up and move out of the house or you have friends who have children the same age as yours, and they're experiencing things that your child can't or maybe won't ever experience. I think a lot of times, we grieve the life that we feel like we're missing out on or the one we thought we should have had. First of all, I wanna talk a little bit about the stages of grief with this caveat. This does not mean that you walk through these in a nice neat pattern. And honestly, I don't even love the word stages. Sara talked about the funnel in our book, The Other Side is Special. I think that analogy is amazing. I think these are rather maybe categories or ways to identify and name generally some of the things that we experience when we are going through grief and loss. I think that's the key is when we experience loss. I am going to describe these different categories or identities, I guess, identifiers, if we're trying not to use the word stages. But here's a few that they talk about in the book, Extraordinary Kids, Nurturing and Championing Your Child, especially This is a pretty old book that Focus on the Family put out many years ago, one I read early on in my journey with having my son with a disability, and they are: (I like these phrases that kind of come with them).

Denial: I can't believe this is happening to me. 
Anxiety: how can I possibly handle this? 
Fear: what will happen to my child and my family? 
Guilt: what did I do to cause this? 
Depression: my hopes and dreams seem to be lost forever.
Anger: this isn't fair

Acceptance: I don't like what has happened. I don't understand why it has happened. I really don't know how I'm going to handle this. But God knows, and I can trust him. 

My first question for the three of us is, has there been a specific category of naming in this grief process that you've experienced, maybe more than another, or maybe one that you've just particularly felt yourself stuck in? 

Amy J. Brown: I think it changed throughout my many years of motherhood, I camp in guilt a lot. I'm going to speak to the people who have kids with invisible disability and behavioral stuff. There's no blood test I can point to or like an MRI scan. So I think I'm continually hitting up against the guilt of how other people see me, how I see my parenting. And because it's unrelenting or maybe not unrelenting, but it doesn't ever like get to a point where I don't have this grief. We're dealing with different kinds of behaviors as they go through the different ages. What they did at nine, they do differently at 18. So for me, a lot of what did I do wrong? How could I fix this? And I really feel it currently right now with my adult kids that are out of the house. I see their grief, or they're going to therapy, which I want them to go, but there's a part of me is like, did I screw them up too much? That's part of it. Like, pardon me. We jokingly go, well, they'll be in therapy. But then when they are, you're like, okay, I must have really screwed them up. I agree with them and what they missed and how they were hurt. And then I, instead of just going, this is what it is, I think, oh, maybe I should have done this differently. I have, over the past time, really dealt with guilt, but. I've also dealt with anger. I will say that I've never been a person that likes anger. I think I was taught early it's not okay to be angry. I don't really get mad very often, but I find myself getting mad about things internally and not realizing actually that's grief. 

Carrie: Yeah, that's interesting. I think it's also interesting that you say your kids are in, you want them to see a counselor, but at the same time, then we feel guilty about it.  Honestly, I wonder sometimes if it's just because there's a stigma around us needing to talk this out with someone. I still feel like we're just wrestling through that, you know, like we as moms again, it's the should I have done something different so my kids don't need to see a counselor. But instead, we should say I equipped my kids with the tools that they are going to need.

Amy: I was talking to one of my mentees, and I said, she said, I know that I shouldn't respond this way. I know all the reasons why my child has trauma. And I said, you're not a textbook, you're a person. We are people, and we're going to have all these feelings. I want to add one more thing, back to the anger and that. We want our kids to have those tools. I think there is this narrative around being perfect moms, and then we get heaped on us, “You're so wonderful, I couldn't do what you do,” which isolates us more. To be honest about what we're feeling and the things we're sad about is so important. I think it's important that you're careful who you're honest to, obviously. You have to be careful who you pick, but I think it's easier to hide. But what I wanted to say about the anger is, last night I had to deal with something from school. I have done this countless times. I'm good at it. I know how to do it, I handle it, but I was mad afterward, and I thought I was just so mad, and I was kind of crabby. Then I realized this morning that just because I'm good at it and know how to do it and have handled it five million times, I'm still really sad that I have to handle it, and It took me some journaling this morning to go what was behind that anger because I typically don't I mean I get up in arms about things sometimes, but usually, personally, I'm not a yeller. I don't get mad that often, but I was mad, really mad, and too,  had to kind of be curious about that. Then that led me straight back to our friend, our not-so-fun friend, Grief. It really does exhibit itself in so many ways. 

Carrie: I love how you said you were curious about why and dug deep into that. I think that's so important for our listeners to hear when these emotions come up, the depression, the anger, the guilt, the denial. We've got to dig a little deeper and ask ourselves why. So good. How about you, Sara? Do you have a specific phase of grief that you've struggled with more than another?

Sara:  Yeah, I mean, I think, as you both said, there's an ebb and flow to all of them. As long as we're on this journey, and actually, for me, I know even afterward, there's still going to be a lot of grief. For me, with my son's diagnosis being progressive, aggressive, and terminal, the fear is prevalent a lot. C.S. Lewis said, “I never knew that grief looked so much like fear.” What will happen to him? Every six months, we go to see all of his “ologists” - the whole team. We're always given statistics. Well, it hurts here, you know? And so you're always like, okay, it was at 98, 96 % last time. Where is it going to be? And if it fluctuates at all, especially if it goes down, then you could go straight to guilt, “Oh, did I give him too much salt? Did he not have enough fruit? There are so many things that you go through. At the beginning of the journey, I was angry, and I camped out there for a long time. Not only that, it wasn't fair, but how could God do this? Why isn't he stopping it? I had every faith that God existed, every faith that he could do what he had said he'd done. But to look at this perfect child of mine who's still perfect, how could this be happening? I think sometimes that's the way my brain works. I want to know. I think I fluctuate a lot but mainly fear, I would say.

Carrie: I don't know if this is actually part of the categories. I think it falls a little bit under maybe anger, depression is that feeling of being hurt that God didn't stop it. This week I happened to be on a Zoom call, and one of the other ladies who has a child with special needs, made the comment. It's so funny because I've probably heard this a million times in my life, but it hit me uniquely at that moment and very differently. She said a lot of times, we mistakenly believe; we think God's love looks like God stops the situation, but Jesus said we were gonna have trouble. (I mean, our whole podcast is named after that scripture of John 16:33: In this world, you're going to have trouble, but take heart, I've overcome the world. Yet we need to see God's love is that He is with us in it. He gives us His Holy Spirit, His power, His strength, and His comfort. Again, I know that in my head, but it hit me, it hit my heart so differently this week. It's something that I just keep reminding myself of. It is really a false belief that the only way God can show love to us is to stop whatever hard thing is coming our way. 

Sara: Well, I think it's very important for me to stay in the Word, even though, quite honestly have had a hard time lately. I don't do it with the viewpoint that I probably do because I'm going through a lot of grief right now. But I've been through this enough to know that if I stay true and I stay in the Word, God will provide what I need. It might not be today because I might not be open to it, but it will be there. I feel God will give me what I need. Sometimes, there's so much in this world that is right in front of us that to sit down and take a moment to be in the word or listen to a full podcast or anything like that doesn't seem to be able to be happening. Because if you're up at five o 'clock and you go to bed at 11 and you crash hard, and then you're up throughout the night. I think that's also when you’re not deep into grief, that's when you build the habits. Now that I'm deep into grief, I know what works. It's kind of like building the habit of exercise. Amy, you've said you love the outdoors. That's what gives you life. There might be days when you do not want to go for a long walk or anything like that, but you know it will make you feel better. 

Carie: I think what you're saying is when we're not in those survival modes of grief is when we can kind of dig our roots a little bit deeper. I heard actually in a podcast today they called it like snacking on God's word. When you're in survival and you're not getting a lot of sleep, finding ways to get the nuggets in is important. We have different seasons. We should not feel guilty about those different seasons.

Amy: I want to just step in here and say that I don't want our listeners to go, one more thing I have to do. I want to say that God is love, and love is always walking toward us wherever we are, whether you're in a hospital bed, you're talking to the principal again, or you're done, you're tired. If you go several days without doing that, that doesn't mean that you're doing anything wrong, it means God's always walking towards us. He sees our life, so He sees how hard it is right now. I don't think He's the kind of God that says, it's really hard for Sara, let me pile more on her. If she would only read six verses, I would take some of this off. That's really faulty theology. So I think about how God is home, and He is always beckoning us there. Sometimes that may look like the only thing you could do is step outside and put the sun on your face or deep breathe or do a breath prayer.  I'm not negating that you shouldn't be in scripture, but sometimes we just absolutely can't, and that's okay too. 

Sara: I think whenever I say be in the word, I mean, whichever way you can get it, that could be a podcast. That could be two minutes of an hour-long podcast. That could be a breath prayer. You do a breath prayer and just one verse that you like. I know my favorite verse is: “Be still and know that I am God.” I will do that over a breath prayer. To me is being in the Word. I have not sat down and read scripture or completed a devotion and did my 30 minutes since my son fell. I just can't. I don't feel that it's possible. I don't feel that God would want me to sit there for 30 minutes, rolling my eyes. He wants us to come to him willingly. I also think that if we put more time and effort when we have the time, when we have those resources, then for these past few months, when I can't seem to find time to get in the word, I will be walking through the house and then a scripture will pop up to me. That's because I've been in the world before whenever it's not been chaotic. There are different ways to be in the word. 

Carrie: In Amy's section on grief in our book, The Other Side is Special, I loved the story she told about moving into a new house and waiting for the lilacs to grow. I love lilacs. Actually, we had a couple of bushes that had to be ripped out because we had a little bit of construction done on the outside of our house. I have been grieving the loss of those lilac bushes and my magnolias. I've been so sad about that. But Amy, you told the story of how you kept waiting; spring came, and you were waiting for those bushes to bloom and they weren't blooming. You wanted to rush in and fix it. When you have a child with a disability or special needs, it's similar. All of it, we have this upheaval, whether it's the initial diagnosis or bumps along the way, hospital stays or IEP meetings, or whatever it might be. All of a sudden, we're trying to fill the space and put everything back to normal. How have you tried to fill that space? Did it work? Did it serve you well? What have you found will serve you better? 

Sara: I have tried to fill that space and avoid it,  trying to get things back to normal. When he was younger, he would say things like, I remember one specific time (he has Duchenne muscular dystrophy for those who don't know, and it is a progressive muscle-wasting disease), The first muscles that start to deteriorate are the legs. We actually found his diagnosis because of his gait. The way he ran was very different,  and we could tell something was different. We went to a local shoe store to buy him shoes. He was eight, nine years old at the most and they have this basketball game that's shooting basketballs. My oldest son was over there doing that. TJ, my youngest, was buying tennis shoes, and he wanted to try on these three different pairs. He said no to the first one he tried. He goes, “Those don't make me fast enough.” I remember sitting there thinking. He'll never be fast enough. He doesn't understand what this is, what his normal is. I remember thinking, how can I fix it in this moment to where he understands that these shoes won't make him faster? I finally realized there was nothing to fix. I'm not going to put on a pair of shoes and be faster and I don't have Duchenne. I mean, I'm not negating what he has. I finally realized, okay, we'll find the shoes that make you the fastest that you're most comfortable with because at that moment, his normal was that he was an eight-year-old boy, and he wanted shoes that made him faster. I think I have learned the best way to deal with it is not returning to normal, it's accepting where we are now and going with the flow. 

When my son fell, it was horrible. It was a really rough surgery, and he cried every day for a very long time. He's very happy; he's accepting of his diagnosis. The first time he cried, it was our gut reaction to say, “It'll be okay, it'll be okay. it's fine, it's going to be okay, it's going to be okay. Then I stopped, and I said, “I don't know if it's going to be okay, but we're going to get through it,” and so we prayed.

We let him cry. We cried with him. My mother-in-law was sitting there one time, and she started crying, and then she said, “I'm so sorry.” There's nothing to be sorry about crying with him. This is, this just stinks. Why can't we all just cry? I guess what I'm trying to say is I learned not to return things to normal. You can't always fix that. 

Carrie: Sometimes you have to plant something new.

Amy:  With the said lilac bushes, I was so mad that they didn't bloom. I wanted to go to a nursery and get a full-blooming bush taller than me. That's so much money. I couldn't handle the thought that they wouldn't be there. Maybe I can handle it for one year, but two years. I mean, come on. When I think about that, I think about how my wanting to fix the lilac bushes is about control because I'm afraid of the future. What I would do in this situation with our kids is I would throw everything at it. I would get my 100% type-A overachieving self in it and throw everything at it. But the amount of energy I put into trying to help and change behavior, there was not a great return on investment, unfortunately. I wish I had known as you said, this is our new normal. Just because this thing is happening today doesn't mean this terrible perceived thing I'm thinking of is going to happen down the road. I think it's a natural response to want to go in. I was just reading, The Lord is My Courage by KJ Ramsey. She talks about how we have these, she calls them managers and firefighters. The managers come in and they're the boss. They're the overachiever. They keep us from feeling our emotional pain. I have great managers. They're so good. Then we have firefighters that douse the pain. That could be Netflix, wine, overworking, or anything that gives us a distraction. The other part of us are the exiles, the grief, and all the things that are hidden back here. My manager, as I said, could run a Fortune 500 company; she's so good at what she does, but she doesn't always serve me well. I've had to learn to tell her to be quiet and just be with what is. I've said this before on the podcast, I have moms ask me, with kids with behavioral issues, what can they control and what can they not. I always say that's the wrong question to ask because they're, you know, the right question. I would say the same thing here; how can we make this better? How can we get the lilac bushes back? But, how about we just sit with (as you said, Sara), this is where we are. Some of that fight goes down, I think when we were able to do that. It's not easy, but I've learned that fighting and trying to get my manager on board and run the show is sometimes more exhausting. 

Sara: I think if you're always looking at how to fix things, you're not aware of what all is working right. If I am always going oh, I need to fix this. He's crying, and I need to stop it. If you're constantly worrying about fixing the lilac bush, are you not seeing what might be able to be planted in its place? Carrie, as you said, you can replant, you can plant something else, and maybe it's going to be better. Maybe it's going to be more beautiful. I don't know. 

Carrie: It's true. I know for me, a lot of it is definitely control. I think when even I start to experience that grief, my go-to is usually overscheduling and overmanaging. I was listening to one of the episodes that we did, and I still look back and laugh at it when celebrated Christmas with my family. The day I went home from the hospital after having a C-section; our son was still in the hospital. Why couldn't I let that go? I think one of you said it earlier, Amy, I think you said it, it was fear.

It's fear because it hits at the point of mom guilt. I'm trying to keep things as normal as I can for the other two boys so they don't resent their brother and keep things as normal as possible for the family. One of the things that I've realized is that your body pays the price later. I feel like I'm working on that right now, even the ways that I've tried to self-medicate with food or chocolate or candy or whatever, eventually, it catches up with you, whatever you're using to try to fix it. Sara, I think you made a good point too. I think when we're always trying to get back to what we thought our life was going to look like (I think there's a little bit of denial in that), instead of asking God to help us accept it, we miss so much beauty of the new things that can be planted in their place. If my husband is listening to this podcast, he's gonna come to me and say, Carrie, the landscaper gave us a new vision for our landscape, you need to let him plant the new plants because I said, no, I want the old ones that I like. We miss the beauty in the new things that we appreciate, the new perspectives that we have, and the increased compassion. When we see a child in the grocery store acting out, and we don't know their story, so we stop and pray for them. Those are the ways that God has changed our hearts to be more tender because we see life a little differently through these glasses.

I recently have been reading a book called Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy. It's by a pastor named Mark Vroegop. He pastors a church in Indianapolis. It's actually a book about lament. He describes lament like this: “It can be defined as a loud cry or passionate expression of grief. However, in the Bible, lament is more than sorrow or just talking about sadness. It is more than walking through the stages of grief. It is a prayer that leads to trust, and it includes four key elements: an address to God, a complaint, a request, an expression of trust or praise.” What I found interesting about his definition of lament; he's mostly talking about the Psalms. Through his book, he kind of teaches you how to lament. He says we're not comfortable with it because, again, we want to fix it. We just want to get to the other side. Sometimes we're not comfortable just sitting in complaint. It's not complaining just to complain about something, it's to tell God what we've lost. 

Do either of you have some experience with lament, and why do you think it's uncomfortable or have you had struggles with telling God how you really feel about your situation? 

Amy: Well, first of all, I think there's an idea that we can't be honest with God, that we have to be all gussied up and good girly. I may have shared this before, but we did lament in grad school, and we had to do a practice of lament. I couldn't get to my room quick enough to write it. It was surprising to me that after 20 years of parenting kids with behavioral issues, I had not truly done it. I kind of dipped my toe into it and then went, but anyway, I'm sure it'll be fine. Thank you. I was trying to be the good girl, but I have a lament worksheet that I give my mentees and it has to be at the right time. I want to start there. This is a practice that I don't give out right away. I start listening to when they're talking to me and I think, okay, this practice of lament is, I think, something that will be helpful right now for this person. Everyone that's used it has said it was very freeing. To answer your question is, I think it's hard to talk about because I don't think we understand it. I think I hear a lot of people say, if I start lamenting, I'll never stop. and I'm afraid of that, or they have this idea it's not okay to tell God, why did you let this happen? I think it's a tool. I think it's a very healing tool, like a spiritual practice. I don't think we have to lament everything. I mean, I think there are times when we go, okay, this is something that keeps coming back. It's like being curious, as I said earlier, why do I keep feeling this yucky feeling about this kind of situation? That may be a time when the tool of lament would be really helpful. 

Sara: Yeah, that's really good. I think earlier on, if somebody had told me earlier on in my son's diagnosis, you need to lament this. I would have had something else to say back because I think it's a churchy word. I think, like Amy said, people don't understand it. I didn't understand it. There is a basis of trust in there. Even though I knew I believed God's promises, there was a point where I felt my trust in God was broken. My husband and I can get in a fight or something, and maybe the trust might be a little rusty, but that doesn't mean we stop loving each other or we don't stop trusting completely. It just means one of us was a little boneheaded, and we needed to move on. Not everything needs to be lamented, and you have to be in the right mind frame. But I think if you're earlier on and you think I won't ever get there because I don't think I'll ever be able to trust the praise of this sorrow that I'm feeling because I think that's part of it. It's handling that sorrow through trust and turning to God. If you don't feel like you ever get there, that's okay. Time will help move you in that direction if you stay grounded in feeling the emotions. I didn't feel for a long time because it was too hard. I think that's what I needed to survive at that point. Eventually, you're going to feel them, and they're going to come out in all of its glorious fashion. Mine got sprayed all over everybody. I was talking about the funnel, there's only so much that can go into it. I was using an analogy of a funnel, and when my son was diagnosed, all of the emotions piled into this funnel. I didn't slowly go through any stage. There was no ebb and flow. It was a really messy rush of everything into the funnel, and hope will come out of that funnel. Sometimes there's so much going into it that there's splash-over. You can't help that. That's okay too. I knew that God was God. I knew I believed in his promise, and that's all I could say to him at that moment without saying other things. I said some really nasty things to God. I've lamented those because I said some horrible things to God. 

Carrie: So, did David too. When you read the Psalms, they're pretty raw. They really are.

Sara: I had shared one time, and I think I broke down saying it. My husband said, okay, it's going to be okay. We were going through a lot at the moment, not just my son's diagnosis, but it just seemed everything was piling on. We couldn't keep up with anything. I looked at him and I said “What is he? What is God like? Is he a puppet master? Is he enjoying this?” It's like he's a grown toddler with Hotwheels and this little mat of a city. You see those Hotwheel mats with the cities, and my kids would just ram them into each other and laugh. That was the visual I had of him. I screamed at my husband. Does he get joy out of my pain? It still hurts me to say that it's getting easier because I have lamented it. I didn't feel bad about it and say, Oh, that was a really crappy thing to say to God or about him. I have gone to God and been like, that was horrible. I'm so sorry that I've lamented. There's a lot of grief and sorrow and pain that went with it. It's getting easier to talk about, but not that he forgives me more today than he did when I said it. To those listening, lamenting is a practice. It’s something that, with practice, the first time you practice anything, you might not be that great at it. Some people rock at it. 

Carrie: I think lament for me was permission to tell God how I really felt because of the way that I grew up in the way that I believed was; I couldn't actually tell him what I really thought. It's that tension. In the book, he says, “Lament is the honest cry of a hurting heart wrestling with the paradox of pain and the promise of God's goodness.” That's something that I am still wrestling with in different ways. God, I've tried to do all the right things. I've tried to do this, but you still allowed this to happen to my son. Lament, as I've studied it and learned it. It's been a powerful tool for me personally because I didn't know that I could tell him how I really felt and that I could sit in that tension of pain and God's goodness. As you said, Amy, it takes trust. It takes so much trust to say to God, will you forget me forever? The Psalms repeat that over and over. How long are you withholding this blessing from me? Are you turning your face? Is your back turned to me? We'll put links in the show notes, but I would just encourage our listeners, no matter where you're feeling in your grief journey, that lament can give you the language, even just reading through the Psalms and praying them back to the Lord. They're in there. You can say those words to him. The Bible says that God is near to the broken heart and saves those who are crushed in spirit. He wants us wants us to call out to him and wants us to draw near to him. 

Sara: Even, Jesus showed us how to lament. All it was was one sentence: God, why have you forsaken me? He even did that. 

Carrie: He was quoting the Psalms. 

Sara: David said some horrible things, but they were true to him in the moment. Whenever I said, are you just a puppet master? Do you enjoy my pain? I felt that way in that moment. I know now that it's not that way, but I had to go through that, and I had to get to a point where. I don't know if it's that I didn't care how God felt about it, but I was so angry. I was so broken, and I was so lost that nothing but the truth to him was going to even come close to fixing it. I thought if I can't do this anymore, it's I think it's kind of like being in a really bad, like a bad relationship where you guys are just kind of friends, but you're going to hang on for for a longer time. I thought, if this is what breaks us up, so be it. I can't keep being the person I think God wants me to be. I can't live in that dichotomy anymore of who I feel. Maybe it was the religion I was brought up with. It was more fear -based and preachers yelling. I don't know if that had something to do with it now or that I'm more mature or what. But you have to get to that point where you tell God exactly how you feel. I think that's the first. Even though you might not see that as trust, that's trust.

Amy: I'm a mentor, so every single conversation I have with a mentee, whether it's how to handle bedtimes, how do I deal with deeper emotional things, underlying every conversation, I recognize a narrative about God that they've grown up with that totally colors how they look at their situation. I can't bust in right away and go, well, you've got a wrong narrative. No, no, no. I have to listen. I recognize it because I recognize it in myself. I would probably lean more towards Carrie; I'm going to be the good girl. I remember saying, I have done all this for you. I stood in church and cried one time and said, do you hate me? Really? Three of them? Three of them have attachment disorder. What is up? I guess I want to say to our listeners that wherever you are, it's OK to be there. We all are going to approach how we look at God from our childhood messages and all those things. We're all going to approach it differently. We're all going to be at different phases. We're going to express it differently. There's no right or wrong way to go, well, I've never lamented, so I must be doing something wrong. These are all ways that God brings us on this journey. Go back to knowing that you are truly loved by God and that He holds all of this in His hands. I say this a lot, He sees us. He's the God who sees us. I think that's really important to remember wherever you are on this journey. The journey is not…there's no destination. It’s hills and valleys and loopy loops when it comes to grief. 

Carrie: Sometimes we're upside down, hanging by our feet. 

Amy: And not strapped in. 

Carrie: There are no safety bars. I'm going to close with Psalm 13, which is a psalm of lament. I love what Amy just said, and that is that we are unconditionally loved by God. I've been on this quest to find the phrase, the steadfast love of God through scripture. What's interesting is it's in Genesis, it's in Numbers, it's a lot in the Psalms, but it is in many places in scripture in the Old Testament: that steadfast love of God. For those of you who are listening, remember that God loves you steadfastly, and steadfast means it's never gonna go away no matter what you do, no matter how you feel, it's always there. 

Psalm 13, I'll close with this. 

How long, O Lord?

Will you forget me forever? 

How long will you hide your face from me? 

How long must I take counsel in my own soul

and have sorrow in my heart all the day? 

How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? 

Consider and answer me, O Lord, my God. 

Light up my eyes lest I sleep the sleep of death,

lest my enemies say, “I have prevailed over him,” 

lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken. 

But I have trusted in your steadfast love. 

My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. 

I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me.